Have you ever been tortured? I have. I have lived, hell I live, with the constant and agonizing terror of not knowing when my torturer will come back through the door–when the purveyor of pain will return to peddle their product to the innocent man that is me. For years, I have faced the fanatical fiend that found her way under the false pretenses of a fortuitous future into my life. The problem, my friends is that the perpetrator who propagates my plight, is so sweet in the day and evil in the night.

So this alliterative attempt, albeit now with added assonance, is the introduction in another episode of my anguished sleep life.

I have written to you all before of my wife’s nightly antics. I want to record them so badly, but I worry that if I was to show “Awake Whitney,” “Asleep Whitney,” that some tragedy would occur like in Back to the Future with the polaroid and the whole “Marty McFly disappearing while playing Earth Angel” thing.

Lately, its taken a turn for the even more insane. It has become a harrowing experience complete with me waking up to Whitney standing on the bed, looking nine feet tall from my vantage point, head on pillow. In her eyes, resided a look that said, “I am going to stomp your head now.” When I asked her what she was doing up there, Sleeping Whitney scrambled for an excuse, as not to give her true intention of stomping my noggin into flatness. Her answer was simple and logical.

“I was trying to catch the floating baby.”

I am not even sure how to have responded to her statement. Why? Well it’s simple. I am not sure that the floating baby scenario isn’t just about the creepiest thing she could have said at that moment. It’s like interviewing a psychopath using the Rorschach Ink Blot Test. You know how it goes. I hold up a card that looks remarkably like an innocent butterfly and say, “What do you see, Whitney?” To which Sleeping Whitney would respond calmly and like it is obvious, “I see a butterfly…………..with wings made of human skin and the ability to talk, but when the butterfly talks it can only say perverse and vulgar phrases.”

Adding to the drama, once Sleeping Whitney explained her heroic intentions of catching the floating baby, she panicked and dropped in place like she was shot, or worse still, like the demon in her body promptly exited, stage left, and in doing so, her hind end hit the marble top of the bedside table, cracking it, and leaving a triangular shaped purple mass. For two weeks now, when Awake Heath pats Awake Whitney’s butt as an affectionate gesture, Whitney glares at him in pain. For just a moment, a fleeting and brief moment, we remember what lies beneath the seemingly sweet facade that is my wife’s awake body.

And this, my faithful following, was only one event, and it was the most innocent of them all. The following night, I was scared awake by Sleeping Whitney yelling in her sleep. Sadly, this is not too out of the norm in my house, but what ensued was unexpected. After about ten seconds of unintelligible ramblings, Sleeping Whitney somehow propelled herself, without having left the laying down position, three feet out of the bed slamming into the wall. The abrupt meeting with the wall was enough to wake Whitney.

Dazed and confused, she looked at me and said, “See what happens when you steal all of the covers?”

This was horrifying.

“After the “Floating Baby Incident,” and the world record setting “Three Foot Flop,” I quickly realized that crazy had come to town and that it had taken up residence in my bed. Alas, these two were just the labor pains of something much more terrifying.

In the middle of sweet dreams of unicorns, puppies frolicking upon clouds made of marshmallow goodness, and beams of rainbows and Oompa Loompa’s singing rhythmic riddles, I was jerked out of slumber. Sleeping Whitney must have saw my Ooompa induced smiling and felt the necessity to end all happiness. I can only guess as to what led up to it, but I picture a wide eyed beauty, now overcome with evil, panting as she reached across the bed and dug her fingers into my eyes. Grabbing with such violent tenacity, one of her fingers was actually able to get beneath my left eyelid, so that when I jerked away and grabbed her hand, my eyelid actually popped from Sleeping Whitney’s gripping fingers and slapped with elastic fervor back onto my eyeball. It was stretched so far and tight that when it connected with my eye, it created an audible popping sound and sent my head backwards; back and to the left; back and to the left like JFK.

Quickly, I blinked and felt for my eyes, certain I would find a gaping hole where once a deep Sinatra blue orb, capable of wooing myriads of women existed. To my surprise, I still had both eyeballs and my vision seemed only momentarily blurred by the tears resultant from a good quality eye gouging and eyelid popping.

I pushed Sleeping Whitney back onto her side of the bed. Sitting still, breathing heavily, I watched Sleeping Whitney. She appeared to be back to normal sleep. Curiously, I leaned in closely and tried to see through blurry tears. Too dark to get a really good look, I leaned in even closer. Silently breathing, eyes closed and resting, she looked as if nothing had happened. I kept close.

The following is not an exaggeration. I would not joke of such things. As I stared, Whitney’s eyes popped open glaring into my face, a small grin appeared on her face as I jumped back and recoiled under the covers. For the next three hours, I felt that lifeless, wide-eyed grin watching me as I feigned sleep. It was the longest night of my life.

So, let me retract my earlier contestation that crazy was now residing in my house, or in the least, let me revise the statement. Crazy just doesn’t do it, for Sleeping Whitney is far more sinister.

Surviving an airplane crash, but being forced to swim for an extended amount of time (anything over 10 minutes). It would be an awkward period of celebration coupled with a horrible, sinking feeling of my impending drowning. I can only hope debris would be everywhere and that I wasn’t on fire. Swimming could only be made worse by somehow making me have to swim while covered in burning petroleum oil. In the military we train to be proficient in the survival strokes and also to survive when the water is on fire due to gas and oil slicks burning; I have somehow fooled the military into thinking I am proficient, but let’s be honest, would a proficient swimmer panic when water goes into his or her ears? I can say, with almost one hundred percent certainty, that the answer to that question is, no.

Being on a ship that has been sunk and having to swim for an extended period of time (anything longer than 10 minutes). Sharks would actually simplify the problem for me.

Swimming in front of others or swimming alone.

Getting into a full on brawl, caught off guard, and naked… this is why I actually do not sleep naked, not because I don’t want to, because I do and as often as possible, but because I cannot let myself be that vulnerable to an unexpected onslaught of violence. It is a necessary give and take to protect my best interests.

Leading a group of rebel Scotsmen against a larger force, losing, but kinda winning, subsequently being drawn and quartered, and then subsequently having my body parts being buried in four separate locations throughout the country as a warning to any other groups of rebel Scotsmen.

Being bullied by a group of high school kids who are all varying levels of awesome in the art of karate, subsequently befriending an old Japanese man who teaches me random movements, convinces the bullies’ karate instructor into staving off all fights until the All-Valley tournament, steals a black belt, and then relying on a martial art technique that is completely dependent upon the enemy to attack straight into a jump kick that is seemingly the only thing I could have done from the crane position….

Being invited to a jungle island for a really cool getaway only to find out the person who has invited you has also been spending an inordinate amount of time cloning dinosaurs, and simultaneously, the person who invited you did not invest in back-up generators for the super-critical electric fence, which separates you from said dinosaurs and a storm hits causing the island to lose power and cancel all departures…

Getting impregnated by a man who says he is from the future and subsequently having to rely on your unborn son to eventually get his criminal ass together, send back his best friend to impregnate you with said son, so that he can grow up, become a criminal high school student who steals money from people, and eventually become the key to the success of humankind while maintaining enough wherewithal to send back his best friend to impregnate you, and eventually grow up to become a criminal high school student…..repeat

Being a cop who gets killed in the line of duty, whose remains are used in a secret squirrel program that combines humans and robots to form a “super cop,” who subsequently has weird and incomplete memories of his past life, and worse yet, has no visible means of relieving himself, and moreover, is blamed for the murder of a huge number of civilians he did not have any part in, black listed, and subsequently forced to kill a bunch or rogue corporate and government officials hell bent on killing him and his partner who still sees the humanity left inside his robot exterior….

Going to the past in a sports car that fails miserably to sell in the real world that is powered by 1.21 gigawatts of electricity from a fusion reactor (unshielded), accidentally happening upon your father peeping on your mother from a tree in her front yard, being hit by a car, and eventually having an inappropriate exchange of saliva with your mother while your brothers and sisters systematically disappear from a photograph you are carrying in your pocket.

Becoming a member of a special forces team that can kill any human element sent to destroy them, who is sent to Central America to rescue another team of operators who have been skinned alive by an apparent alien who seems to be longing to do the same to you…Along the way you run into Apollo Creed, who now works for the CIA and seems to want to kill you as well.

Being born a midget in a fantastical world of supernatural powers and wicked evil where you are stuck with a human baby that needs to get back to normal humans, and along the way you run into Val Kilmer who consistently calls you a “peck” and eventually serves to help you on your way, but you are not sure you can ever trust him.

Becoming a bouncer at a bar that is located in a corrupt town run by a rich man who is also a douche and is not happy with anyone not willing to be bought and serve his diabolical goals, subsequently, you finding yourself in the middle of an epic battle between the oppressor and the oppressed where you must rip a man’s trachea from his body, but along the way, you get to make it with the same woman who screwed over the bartender from Cocktail, but she is now a medical doctor with the key to your heart.

Waking up and realize you are a Naval Flight Officer navigator, flying in the back seat of an F-14 Tomcat, with a reckless, and somewhat arrogant pilot, with boyish good looks, but suffers from feelings of inadequacy stemming from not knowing whether his father is a hero or an idiot.

Being told you were born to balance the force and realizing quickly that there are far less people supporting the dark side…

Falling and impaling myself upon a sharp object.

Additionally, being buried alive.

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.